• Download the India (Tamil Nadu) section of Home Truths: A Global Report on Equality in the Muslim Family in English or Arabic.

• View the report submitted to Musawah by the Tamil Nadu Muslim Women’s Jamaat.

• Download a UNIFEM South Asia Regional Office study edited by Shaheen Sardar Ali entitled 'Conceptualising Islamic Law, CEDAW and Women's Human Rights in Plural Legal Settings: A Comparative Analysis of Application of CEDAW in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan'.      Complete Study      Table of Contents

Tamil Nadu is a large state in southern India. According to the 2001 census, Muslims constituted approximately 6% of the Tamil Nadu population and approximately 13.4% of the Indian population as a whole. Muslim personal law in India is largely uncodified; existing legislation is piecemeal, fragmentary and does not answer all of the needs pertaining to Muslim familial life. The interpretation of Muslim personal law rests on the courts, except in specific instances related to the dissolution of marriages and the awarding of maintenance. There are province-specific acts that enable registration of marriages, but there is no marriage or divorce law—whatever exists is based on case law. Much of the debate on personal law in India has hinged on legal reform, and has seldom looked at family sociology or cultures of residence and matrimony, many of which owe as much to non-Islamic customs as to Islamic tenets.

• In Tamil Nadu, the larger social structures—whether the police, local civil courts, civil society groups or political parties—do not understand the realities of Muslims’ existence as a significant minority. If a Muslim woman approaches a local police station with a complaint of marital abuse, the response is likely to be: ‘But you have your own laws, we can’t interfere, don’t come to us’. This is based on a partial understanding of Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution of India, which guarantees minorities an unimpeded practice of their faith, custom and laws, as well as on unspecified prejudices against Muslims.
   
• It is difficult to find lawyers—or even civil society or political groups—who are familiar with Muslim case law as well as the larger debates about personal and family law in the Indian Muslim context. It is even more rare in the many small towns and villages throughout the state.
   
• The following are often considered acceptable for Muslim marriages in Tamil Nadu:
  • Early marriage, with or without the consent of the bride;
  • Polygamy, with or without the observance of Qur’anic tenets;
  • The practice of the triple talaq;
  • Extra-legal settlement of marital disputes in the presence of the local qazi or a hazrat, often involving issues to do with property, residence and so on.
     
• Other practices that the community generally refuses to condemn include:
  • The practice of taking and giving dowry (payment by the bride’s family to the bridegroom’s);
  • The non-compliance with the mahr requirement, except in the most formalistic sense;
  • Ostentatious and expensive marriages;
  • Marriages contracted under false pretences, especially when the groom is mentally unstable or physically challenged.
     
• Across classes, Muslim women in Tamil Nadu experience a multitude of problems that neither the community nor the legal system grapples with:
  • Poverty often results in early marriage, leading children of fourteen to be married to older men, and thus forced to endure conjugal and sexual trauma.
  • Illiteracy forces women into meagre self-employment or work for abysmally low wages, which puts a strain on marriage and family life.
  • Male migration to the Gulf states and South East Asia, in which women are left behind, often leads to aspersions being cast on women’s marital good faith and/or results in surreptitious extra-marital relationships.
  • Sexual incompatibility is generally not spoken about, and if it is, women are placed in a negative and dishonourable light.

• Although the government of India has not taken a position on family law in recent times, judges sometimes strive to define what the Qur’an intended for women, and on that basis order punitive or compensatory measures. In recent times, such judgments by and large have been positive for women. For instance, the Supreme Court has declared the triple talaq illegal, even in the eyes of Islamic tenets of jurisprudence.
   
• Civil society groups in India have come up with alternative pieces of legislation, including a model nikah namah.

The Tamil Nadu Muslim Women’s Jamaat emerged in response to the several thousand male-headed jamaats attached to major mosques in every village and town which serve as community forums in which all matters pertaining to the ummah are discussed. Women are not allowed to take part in these meetings, even if they are petitioners. The Women’s Jamaat has become a place where women not only come with petitions, but also arbitrate and decide on the merits of a case collectively. This has proved enormously empowering and, over the last few years, has elicited the support of a few male-headed jamaats as well. Significantly, the very presence of the Women’s Jamaat has served to exert pressure on the male-headed jamaats to be sensitive to issues of family discord and women’s rights to justice and equality, especially since the Jamaat insists on community guarantees for a fair and just marriage, including the proper giving of mahr, seeking the bride’s consent, specifying the conditions under which the marriage is taking place, etc.

The Women’s Jamaat underscores its interest in securing equality and justice for women in the family by pointing to the example of the Prophet’s own family and to the role played by his wives, especially Khadija. It has sought to widely publicise positive case law and Supreme Court judgments pertaining to Muslim personal law through public sit-ins and meetings. The Jamaat has also begun to speak of the importance of female education and employment so that women may be able to assume positions of equality in the family with a measure of autonomy and is currently enlisting the support of Muslim women lawyers to the cause.